It's all in the mind, you know

I've been reading some of The Science of False Memory by C.J. Brainerd and V.F. Reyna. Their review of research into the implanting of false memories is pretty convincing - it is possible to convince people to remember things that didn't happen to them, to the point where they can tell you details about non-existent events. What isn't clear, from their review, is whether you can actually traumatise a patient by implanting false memories of severe trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse; or whether you can attach incorrect memories to the symptoms (such as PTSD) or a trauma that did happen (eg, the wrong perpetrator). As the authors point out, you can hardly experiment on people to find out; the research they review involves mildly distressing "memories", such as getting lost.

The discussion of self-hypnosis, imagination, etc, brought into focus an unrelated issue for me: what if my spirituality is only a symptom of my mental illness? I'm trying to think this through, even as I type this entry. I don't confuse what I know through spiritual experience with what I know through everyday experience - I can be certain about the latter, but never about the former. To put it more simply, if I see the winning lottery numbers in a dream I'm still not buying a ticket. :-) To put it another way, my thoughts about the Divine are changeable in a way that the speed of light isn't. But what if my entire way of making sense of the world comes from a kind of brain static?